Movie Review - Killing Curriculum: Jinroh Shokei Game (2015)

Nine students and a teacher are kidnapped and locked inside a building. They are not allowed to leave the building, and any attempt to do so results in the death of the participant. Every day at 3:00 p.m., the participants gather and vote off one member to be killed. Every night, two of the participants who are designated as "werewolf", execute one of the other participants.

Killing Curriculum - Jinro Shokei Game is somehow worse than Jinro Shokei Game

The main character

Let's talk about Niina. He is a main character who has no reason to live. Not just in the death game that they are playing, but generally no reason to continue his life at all. He is portrayed as a shy, depressed, possibly homosexual person who is constantly bullied by his peers.

That is not even the biggest deal with this main character. Note that Killing Curriculum - JSG is the prequel to Jinro Shokei Game. So, we have a suicidal main character who tries to get killed for two whole movies - and fails. It is a death game. How difficult is it to be killed in a death game?

In both movies, another more capable main character shows up to save Niina from the other people in the game, and from himself. Yes, Niina dies in Jinro Shokei Game, but still surviving to the top two in a death game is very absurd for a suicidal person.

Special effects

This movie looks like it was made in the 1990s from the arrangement of the special effects. The laser effects look like they were made on PowerPoint and overall are a disappointment to the Jinro game franchise. I believe they even reused a shot of the virus killing the sensei by seeping into his brain. The blue ink shot was definitely reused from Jinro Shokei Game.

Acting

The acting was actually good. Not very great but not horrible acting either. The characters are believable with nothing going over-the-top. Most of the characters are not people you would sympathize with, but when they are faced with their death, they react realistically.
Character development was one of the notable features for this movie. We have the bad-guy, sidekick Kotou who starts off as a "spoon" or "chamcha" to his friend. But later on, he stands up on his own and makes decisions using his head. He also shows sympathy to the dead and performs a funeral rite to the dead contestants. 

Another person with good character display is Yukari who uses the death game to kill off her elder brother.

Plot

One of the major twists in the story is that Curry guy, Takiguchi Hiroki is not actually Curry guy Takiguchi. Of course, their sensei looked at his hand early in the movie and was able to figure it out. The fact that another person had infiltrated their group to partake in the death game also seems silly. However shocking that twist may be, the reason for personally joining the death game is not believable.

The virus

The virus element of the Jinro Shokei Game two-movie series ruined the whole experience for me. The point of the manga was that people were arbitrarily assigned to werewolves and villagers side, and that their actions are a result of this selection. They are compelled to take lives or lose their own.

Jinro Shokei game's introduction of this virus negates the point established in the manga. By having a virus take control of the player's mind, the human element is taken away. The virus made me do it - makes for a very boring storyline for a death game.

Peaceful Sparta is a huge fan of the Jinro Game franchise. Even today, he cries into his pillow, late at night because of his disappointment over the lacklustre live-action movies made about the interesting manga.